newbular scsi type question

[Spade]

ok, so i went and bought two older seagate cheetah 10k drives

yes thyere small, i dont mind that.
model # st39102lc

my question is, how the HELL do i power these suckers?
i dont have any cables that would hook up to them properly
coming out of my psu..
do they run power from the 80 pin connectors? what?!

i know i shouldve researched this more, but heck someone
will get a great deal if i cannot make them work :P

i have an old isa type controller card, and some 50 pin cables coming.. i know i need to upgrade to like an LSI controller
off of newegg. but im just simply stumped on how these things are supposed to be powered.

i do see two card type interfaces, with silver traces on the pcb..
almost like the "golden fingers" for the early athlon slot-a's.

i also see something similar to an ide molex plug area..
but it looks more like thats intended to be the drives master/slave
jumper block section.
i got these drives with no literature other then my sales receipt so
i cannot simply "rtfm".. heh heh.

i dont know jack about scsi. and i know i probably shouldnt have done this, but ive already googled them, and all i find are
specs and recomendations about raid setups.
i DO know they will need to be terminated, and i think i have that covered.. i have a terminator leftover from something scsi
scavenged from someones old box, and the cables ive ordered
should be coming with a set of terminators too.

any help muchly appreciated

cheers! :)

[Spade]

hahaha gee, lots of people chomping at the bit to answer me here.. its ok though.
apparently the converter has the molex type plug in for power to run the drive.
i had ordered a 50-80 pin converter to work with my decrepit
controller card, and thats what will power the drive.
this scsi stuff looks neat, but now i dont know which way to install the jumpers/cables.
i guess ill help myself, and anyone else who runs into this type of problem. hopefully i dont fry this drive by plugging it in backwards or putting jumpers wrong.. wish me luck.

cheers :P

[99'erForever]

You cannot fry the fry because you can't plug it in backwards. The cable and the connectors are shaped like trapezoids so they only go on one way. Your adapters will have jumpers to set the ID along with instructions since the drives themselves have no jumpers. Good luck!

[Xaotic]

I hope you got the dual 50 and 68 pin adapters. The 50 pin narrow interface is not impressive for it's speed. For that drive a U2W controller, cable with active terminator and a decent SCA adapter will work best, but you may be able to get U160 parts for about the same cost.

[stool]

Here's a place that might help you get a little more familiar with SCSI:

http://www.paralan.com/glos.html

and another:

http://www.computercraft.com/docs/scsifaq1.html

You'll also find a few links to help you out.

[Spade]

awwww im all teary eyed now :) thanks for everyones suggestions and help (serious here, no sarcasm).
ive learned like a TON in one day of just jumping into the damn things and trying them out.

ive figured out how to set the scsi ID's.

ive noticed, but not played with the jumpers on my adapter.
(maybe going to play with the one that tells the os whether or not it even HAS a bios installed)

i now know that the converters (50-68, or 50-80 pin) come with molex plugs for the source of power.

lastly, i know i probably shouldve saved some money on all this,
and just went with the cheapo LSI u160 from newegg :/

ah well, live and learn, i may lost like 15 bucks from ordering 50 pin cables and a 80-50 pin converter.

oh yeah almost forgot, i learned 10k rpm drives are LOUD(only on startup though yay! :) ) and HOT and sound a bit like the death star warming up to blow up a planet...

cheers! :)

[Spade]

ok, ive jacked myself yet again.
where would i find the cheapest/easiest(read quickestway to get my hands on them)
terminators?
ive ALMOST booted up and installed win2k on one of these drives
yet, win2k can find no hard drive. i think it has no compliant
drivers for my adapter card or something, or else i am running into a wall because i havent terminated any of the cable ends.
i DID have a single terminator, but after reading the links to scsi FAQS i need two, plus the one i had was a d-pin type 25 pin terminator.

also, whenever i set my drive up as anything other then scsi id number: 15, bios post hangs directly after my adapter reports "completed!" for detecting scsi devices.
is this common to non-termination? ok ok
sorry to be so long winded, thanks for any help
cheers :)

[Xaotic]

The absolute cheapest way may not be totally obvious. First, the controller will serve as it's own terminator. That takes care of one end. The other is where it gets different. Most native 50 pin drives can be self terminating. They make adapters that have termination, but a small HDD or CDROM could do it as well and serve another purpose. This ONLY works on the narrow(50 pin) interface and not all drives can self terminate. If you're really pressed for cash, I have a bunch of old narrow SCSI CDROMs that I could probably find a working selfterminating unit from for cost of shipping only. But, it'll probably be Saturday before I can test them.

Another good way is to call local computer shops. They usually will almost give away SCSI-1 components that they're stuck with having in stock.

Finally, terminators are available from online merchants. Usually in the 5-10 dollar range, but the shipping still bites.

[Spade]

thank you :)
since its only a day or so away from my next payday, i think im going to go ahead and get the lsi u160 off of newegg.
i could stand to use some advice on what cables, and/or terminators to buy too
im pretty sure that i should go with something u320 cablewise..
but i still dont know anything about terminators..
on an interesting side note, to get some speed back, i tried to put a newer ata 100 hard drive on the same old motherboard that i was trying to setup scsi on to learn about it.
and guess what? it gets to loading windows 2000, then freezes.
its possible it maybe the motherboard and i had everything setup right all along, but id never know it because either way it seems to be freezing.
this old hunk o junk only wants to work with hard drives that are ata 66 and DOWN.. so i guess ill hunt around for a spare motherboard that has a working ISA slot and is new enough to support ata 100.. im guessing that should at least allow me to boot and play with scsi some more.

thank you for everyone who replied, this place still rocks

cheers :)

[Xaotic]

Hypermicro for the Foxconn or Amphenol cables/terminators in U320 or SVC has round U160s and terminators(I wasn't particularly pleased with the termnators. They have a U160 sticker rather than cast markings. I haven't had time to verify their true state as of yet.) that are comparatively inexpensive. On the SVC site, make sure that you count number of devices including the terminator. If you are going with a small number of drives or nonRAID configuration, go with the U160 cables. You'll probably never notice the difference.

[Spade]

thanks xaotic, youve been a big help.
i just spent half the day f**ing around with it, and im sad to say i damn near broke the thing bare handed after it ****ed me off.

i managed to get the scsi utility to work! that came with the controller card, after taking your advice and intsalling an ancient (scsi-1?) cd-rom acting as a secondary terminator.

i was very pleased with that, however i noticed that scsi drives take a long time to partition/format.
ok, so windows (or DOS rather) thinks "invalid system disk"
so what the heck, i try good ole fdisk, which also works! wow ! im happy now.. right? WRONG!
whatever i do, it will never boot up off the scsi, NOR IDE cdrom to install windows from.
i definately got one step closer, because i used a third party disk to partition and format the drive.. and microsofts dos crap as well..
but it seems thats as far as i can get for today. this has angered me greatly :) but now im back to just waiting for the new lsi controller card. if THAT doesnt work, im going to feel very stupid :)
so to reiterate,
a controller card for around $40.00 and (1/2?) terminator(s) for
10-20?a piece would be all i need to make this function correct?
thanks in advance (oh yeah , i have TWO seagate cheetahs st39102lc)

any thoughts on what my max throughput would be single/and or raided on a u160 card?

cheers :)

[Xaotic]

Like IDE, unless you use a wider or faster bus, the limit is 133MB/s. On a single channel controller, assuming IDE boot and RAID-0 on those Cheetahs, look for throughput in the 80 MB/s range. If you use them for OS, they can't be software RAIDed as a boot array due to limitatons of software RAID. SCSI hardware RAID is of the nature that how much money you spend dictates how fast you can go.

The reason it's so slow right now is the SCSI narrow interface at between 5MB/s and 20MB/s, unless your ISA limits it further. I didn't notice that in you first post. ISA is bad news and SCSI-1 is not much bettter.

Many of the old SCSI cards may not be bootable. The LSIU160 is and tons faster as well.

You need the controller, 1 terminator, a cable(68 pin 4 or more connectors)(the 50 pin for the old SCSI drive will not work) and 2 68 pin SCA adapters(if the adapters you have do not have both 50 and 68 pin connections.

The order on connection will be:

Controller-----Drive-----Drive-----Terminator

You got the drives to format. They should be good. and the rest is fairly easy. Remember, when attaching the drives, to set the SCSI IDs to differing numbers using the jumpers on the adapter(also not to ID7, it's usually used for the controller)

[Spade]

thanks so much, youve basically just walked me through all i needed to know. thats why i like this place.

now, the drives themselves are fairly new, like you said 80/mb per sec throughput (supposedly, also probably PEAK not constant)
and they are the 80 pin variety. so i guess ill need two adapters (sigh MORE money) and a 4 connector cable, like you said.

i had no idea that some of the older cards couldnt boot, which does kind of make sense, seeing as how its an ISA plug in type, and was designed to support a cd rom.

knowing all of this, im not afraid in the least to go ahead and spend some money and get the newer controller card and hook it all up.
just put my mind at ease on ONE thing more..
will one/or two of these drives in a raid setup be faster then the old ata 66 4 gig hard drive theyre replacing? if so, then all is well.
already in use during formats/partitions, theyre quieter.
so ive got silence (working on drive cage next for two) if i have some more speed then what i had ill be more then happy.

tia

cheers! :)

[Xaotic]

Given that it's a 4GB ATA66 drive, even one disk will definitely be faster. If you are booting to the drive, it'll only be possible to use the drives as singles, since software RAID-0 is not bootable. STR will be a bit faster, but seek times will be greatly reduced. IO performance will be higher as well and future expansion/migration is very easy. Overall performance will be noticeably better. Noise can be variable on SCSI drives. The initial spin up can be loud, but once they're up to speed, noise is generally low. Seeks can be louder than IDE and varies by model. RAID configurations can susbstantially increase the noise level, since drives are performing seeks simultaneously.

On the cable, go ahead and get more connectors than you need. That way you can add or migrate drives without any problems.

[Spade]

hahahah! guess what i JUST found today?
newegg got the SAME lsiu160 controller in refurbs!
a measly 28 bones! and more then one!

hahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahahahahah

oh yeah, i feel sick and am going insane,
barring that i now have a bios problem that
will probably require me to BUY a chip for 15
dollars from epox.
sucks. and yes ive tried everything under
the sun
(uniflash wont even do it folks, thats saying something)
i get some weird message about bios file size
doesnt match, must be exactly 242 bytes.
in any case this is a topic for another thread.
anyone else needing the cheap lsi scsi controller
is urged to check out neweggs refurbished section.

cheers! :)